In the News Archives

May 9 2013

Columbia CEC MARCH Advisory Committee Initial Meeting

MARCH Advisory Committee at May meeting

The first meeting of the Maine Arsenic Reduction for Community Health (MARCH) Advisory Committee was held in Readfield, Maine on May 9, 2013. The MARCH partnership grew out of our ongoing community engagement core (CEC) activities. The committee brings together residents of the CEC’s project area in Central Maine that also represent local government, Maine CDC, education, USGS, and the well drilling and treatment field. MARCH aims, through direct engagement with community to enable vulnerable households including those with children, to regularly test their well water for arsenic and other water quality parameters, to have access to information of water quality test results and treatment options, and to take actions to mitigate arsenic in most effective and economic ways. MARCH works with all its partners and members of the community towards eliminating the exposure to arsenic and other contaminants in domestic well water to improve community health. This is a goal adopted by the MARCH advisory committee on behalf of the rural community affected by arsenic and other water contaminants in Maine.

During the first meeting participants reviewed the current knowledge on the arsenic problem in central Maine and the findings of the CEC’s community well testing and treatment surveys implemented in January 2013. Discussion included reasons households decide to test and treat their well water and strategies to engage the community to promote these practices. Plans were made for an NIH Public Environmental Health Partnership (PEHP) Research to Action grant proposal to develop and implement a public health action plan for arsenic mitigation. Committee members gave advice on proposed activities like a longitudinal cohort study on treatment efficacy and a No Arsenic Well Left Behind testing campaign. MARCH Advisory Committee participants included Cheryl Marvinney, Maranacook Community High School; Ike Goodwin, Goodwin Well Drilling; Joanne Joy, Healthy Communities of the Capital Area; and Martha Nielsen, Manchester Select Board and USGS, as well as Columbia CEC scientists Yan Zheng and Sara Flanagan.

Novel approach for field testing arsenic in tubewell water piloted by Lex van Geen and Chander Kumar Singh

Columbia SRP Associate Director Alexander van Geen and TERI University’s Chander Kumar Singh have joined forces to pilot a novel approach for encouraging arsenic testing of tubewell water in India. Millions of tubewells across the Indo-Gangetic plain supply drinking water that is relatively free of microbial contaminants. However, many of these tubewells tap groundwater that is high in arsenic and should be used only for washing. Van Geen and Singh offer a new approach to field testing in order to distinguish safe from unsafe wells, and suggests that people are willing to pay for tubewell testing. They plan to extend this program to 200 villages of Araihazar, Bangladesh, using billboard-sized Google Earth maps of these villages to attract the public’s attention. The online article "Reducing poisoning by arsenic in tubewell water" posted on Ideas for India describes the project in more detail.

Columbia SRP Director Dr. Joseph Graziano will chair the National Research Council (NRC) committee to evaluate critical scientific issues to assess effects from oral exposure to inorganic arsenic. The committee also includes CU SRP Principal Investigator Habibul Ahsan and as well as SRP grantees Maragaret Karagas, Rebecca Fry, and Bob Wright. The committee will plan and conduct a public workshop to gather a variety of perspectives from key stakeholders and the public.

It will then prepare an interim report providing recommendations on how to address these issues in EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) assessment of inorganic arsenic. After the IRIS assessment is revised by EPA, the committee will then review the assessment to determine whether dose-response relationships between inorganic arsenic and cancer and noncancer effects are appropriately estimated and characterized.

The committee will also determine whether the arsenic document implements the recommendations made in Chapter 7 of the 2011 NRC report on formaldehyde for improving descriptions of methods and criteria for selecting studies, approaches to evaluating critical studies, weight-of-evidence analyses, and justification of modeling approaches in IRIS assessments. A final report will be published when the project is completed at the end of 2015.

The NIEHS celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Superfund Research Program at its annual meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, October 21-24. Columbia's SRP received high honors for the outstanding performance of two of its students, both mentored by CU SRP scientist Dr. Mary Gamble.

Caitlin Howe received 1st place for her biomedical poster on "Associations between S-adenosylmethionine, S-adenosylhomocysteine and Arsenic Methylation." A total of 143 biomedical and non-biomedical trainee posters were scored by agency and alumni judges.

Brandilyn Peters, a CU SRP student was selected as one of a three trainees to give an oral presentation as part of the scientific session targeting Research on a Global Scale. She presented "Creatinine, arsenic Metabolism, and renal Function in an Arsenic Exposed Population in Bangladesh."

The NIEHS E Factor online news media features the CU SRP National Priority List Superfund Footprint Mapper as part of its Science Notebook May 2012 edition. Research Translation Core Co-PI Meredith Golden with a team of geographic information specialists led by Tricia Chai-Onn developed the new online mapping service capable of displaying population and environmental characteristics for areas surrounding the footprints of more than 1500 Superfund sites.

NIEHS Research Brief 208: A Flurry of Arsenic Findings

Several Columbia SRP scientists, including Habib Ahsan, Marie Argos, Mary Gamble, Yu Chen, and Karrie Radloff, along with their expert research and laboratory teams have made significant contributions to our scientific understanding of the human health impacts and pathways of exposure to arsenic. As part of CU SRP research in Bangladesh, genetic screening technologies have been used to identify genetic changes that make some individuals more susceptible to arsenic-induced skin lesions (see Hot Off the Presses). Another study demonstrates that folic acid supplementation facilitates arsenic methylation and elimination, thus lowering blood arsenic concentrations. Two other epidemiological studies provide new evidence of health effects from arsenic even at low and moderate levels of exposure. In terms of limiting exposures to arsenic, our geoscientists have shown that populations with high levels of arsenic in their drinking water should use deep wells with low arsenic concentrations and prevent increases in arsenic levels by limiting the amount of water pumped. Please click below for the full NIEHS Research Brief(pdf).

Consumer Reports on Arsenic in your Juice cites CU SRP Director

The January 2012 Consumer Reports Magazine cites Columbia's SRP Director Joseph Graziano in its article, "Arsenic in your juice: How much is too much? Federal limits do not exist". Dr. Graziano suggests a comprehensive approach to reducing exposures to arsenic: "We tackled every source (of lead), from gasoline to paint to solder in food cans, and we should be just as vigilant in preventing arsenic from entering our food and water because the consequences of exposure are enormous for adults as well as children." Please clickherefor the article. Test results for arsenic and lead in apple juice and grape juice are also available through the link below.

The NIEHS SRP Research Brief #203: "Research Shows Arsenic Attaches to Sediments, Protects Human Health" is part of the Columbia SRP project on Mitigation of Arsenic Mobilization in Groundwater which Alexander van Geen heads. CU PhD graduate, Kathleen Radloff, led the team of scientists investigating a key research question: Could the use of deep-water wells cause arsenic-laden water from shallower aquifers to contaminate aquifers tapped by deeper wells?